Monthly Archives: June 2015

When Google announced Android Auto at Google I/O 2014, I was already sold. And by “sold,” I mean I fully expected it to be something I’d want [were I in the market to buy a car that had it]. And while I don’t actually plan on buying a car with Auto any time soon, after spending a week with it, I do feel pretty OK with that gut feeling. We reviewed Auto earlier this month on a Pioneer head unit, but I figured I’d also share my own thoughts on it.

Facebook is free because it makes its money off ads, otherwise known as the attempts to sell you things based off all the personal information you and your friends pump into the social network. Well, those ads don’t just pop up out of the nothingness of the web. Someone creates and pays for them. Now with Facebook’s latest app, said someones can do that from their mobile devices.

The Facebook Ad Manager is aimed at small and medium business owners who want to reach out to the people in their areas.

Remember Bomberman? You know, that cute little maze-based puzzle game that got infinitely more fun when you played it with friends? Right, well imagine a Bomberman game… set in a schlocky slasher movie. That’s basically BRAWL, the latest console pilgrim to come exclusively to NVIDIA’S SHIELD Tablet and SHIELD Android TV. It’s also notably the first Android game we’ve seen on the Play Store with an “Adults only” 18+ ESRB rating, though that might be a mistake – the game’s trailer (which looks like it’s taken from the PS4 version) brands it with the slightly less salacious M rating.

Back in Chrome v39, we got a look at a reader mode not unlike many other mobile browsers such as Firefox. However, it didn’t even leave Chrome Beta before getting hidden in the flags menu. Features that were not originally in flags but later moved there tend not to come back. Well, the latest Chrome Dev, v45, features a revamped version of reader mode. Now, on pages the browser decides could benefit from it, it gives a prompt that says “make page mobile-friendly.” Tapping on that brings the user to a slightly redesigned reader view, though it isn’t described as such anywhere.

Motorola’s David Schuster is just a wellspring of information lately. After announcing the official start of the 2014 Moto X 5.1 update and the Verizon soak test, he’s offering a little heads-up on the first gen Moto G and Moto E.

According to Schuster, the first gen Moto G LTE is getting a full soak test in the US today, but we’ve also seen reports from other regions. For example, a unit in France as above.

Google Drive and its host of specialized editors have been improving by leaps and bounds, this year. Over the last few months, we’ve seen big new features like drag and drop file management, Chromecast support, and much more. The latest update builds on top of the recently added drag and drop interface to give users even more ways to manage multiple files quickly. There is also an overhaul to the interface for selecting collaborators and viewers which makes the experience immensely better.

Facebook would really appreciate it if you would help them take over the world. You know, if you’re not too busy or anything. To that end, they’ve decided to make Facebook Messenger (recently graduated from a simple social network feature to a quasi-platform) truly stand on its own. So now you can use Facebook Messenger even if you’re not one of the billion or so people with a Facebook account – or even if you are, and you don’t want to associate your account with your messages.

There are a few big changes to the Google Play Music app in v6.0, but there are changes coming to your wearable too. There’s a new Android Wear companion app in there (v2.0), and with it comes real download management for music synced to the watch. Finally!

Before today’s update, it was an all or nothing deal. You’d either sync your offline music to your connected watch, or you wouldn’t. Now there’s a new menu in the app settings that lets you view progress of music downloads on Android Wear, and remove individual items (or stop them from syncing over).

Todoist has been holding my professional and personal life together over the past couple of years, and that is no understatement. In my Stuff We Use article, I mentioned how I use it to prepare my pharmacy’s daily orders, but I’ve also grown to rely on it for my regular to-dos, while preparing for trips, or when inspiration hits me and I come up with a new article idea for Android Police for example.